View full sizeRoss D. Franklin, The Associated PressThe city of Phoenix and a developer who was poised to raze the 1952 Wright-designed home in the city's Arcadia neighborhood have reached an agreement that postpones the threat of demolition for almost a month.

Demolition delayed: The unique spiral house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in Phoenix for his son David has won a temporary reprieve from demolition, as the search goes on for a buyer, according to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, another Wright-designed house, this one built in Sammamish, Wash., in his Usonian style, is up for sale (asking price: $1.39 million), which gives a nice chance to view photos of it online.

The doghouse's house: The tale of the doghouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (previously covered in this column) brought attention to the San Anselmo, Calif., house that it was designed to complement. The house, too, comes with a quirky story, about a teacher, Bob Berger, who, aware of Wright's talent but not his fame, asked the architect to design a house that Berger could build himself.

Now that home is on the market -- for $2.5 million, and that's a good thing because it gives us a chance to take a virtual look at it -- there are 26 photos on the listing website -- and also to learn much more about the home and its story via a PDF. The house reportedly took five years for Berger to build, and as you would guess from the timeline, there were sacrifices involved. Yet the payoff made it all worthwhile.

Berger reflected once about his house: "It's just a constant -- the constant idea of beauty in the house. ... It's such a thrill to be feeling a work of art; actually living in it. It's like a living thing. I'm overjoyed with it."

Lessons from Gehry: Freshome offers "10 inspirational lessons from the most important architect of our age," Frank Gehry. (That particular accolade for the Pritzker Prize winner came from Vanity Fair.) The lessons are accompanied by photos and discussion of his work, so they're quite interesting. My favorite Gehry quote:

Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.

Calling fowl: Across the pond, Britons are clucking about a hedge fund manager's design for a £130,000 chicken coop in the style of the Parthenon. (Sample headlines: "Cluckingham Palace" and "The fowl extravagance of Crispin Odey's chicken house.) David Shariatmadari of the Guardian writes, "We appear to exist in an age where some chickens get treated like kings while hundreds of thousands of humans live like battery hens."

House raffle: In Detroit, a woman who wants to move to Germany is raffling off her house -- for $100 a ticket -- instead of trying to sell it in the usual way.

Open spaces: This beautiful, simple 925-square-foot house is so open to the landscape of cornfields around it that it feels large. Dwell says of it: "For this rural Ontario home, building sustainably was less about high-tech gizmos than learning to truly love the land." The photos -- such as the view from the front door through the house to the land outside; the long deck extending out into the corn; the spare but carefully chosen furnishings -- are worth study.

The story also contains some interesting design lessons, such as this:

When building such a modest structure in a large landscape, designer and client often had to defend their vision to their collaborators. "We knew this house was going to be for Maggie (Treanor) and she would live there alone," (Designer Lisa) Moffitt says. "But people are always projecting for future resale. Putting in the smallest size of anything--to any subcontractor, it's just not reasonable." This is why (Maggie's son) Nick Treanor --a philosophy professor--selected all the mechanical and electrical systems. "When you do things yourself, you learn that there are a lot of myths floating in the building industry," Moffitt says. "If you go to the source and talk to manufacturers, you learn that many things that supposedly won't work are entirely feasible."

Natural home:The Home in the Log Cabin by Ryntovt Design in Ukraine takes the natural look to an extreme, and uses green not just as the theme but as the sole accent color in a field of white -- a surprisingly effective touch. The kitchen backsplash is a mural of grass; stools are made of stumps.

Energy-plus: Take that, net zero! The Villa Akarp in Sweden doesn't just produce as much energy as it uses, it produces more -- a yearly surplus of 600 kilowatt hours out of its total capacity of 4,200 kilowatt hours.